_Buffo the Fool Leads Them to the Palace_ In a few moments we entered and crossed the grounds of an immense palace, and Buffo the Fool opened the palace door without ceremony and preceded us into a great hall, where he stopped and said: “I must have a good look at you first. Buffino, my mirror!” The monkey darted off down the hall and up the staircase. While he was gone the Fool said to me: “You have seen the orange tree and the panther?” “Yes,” said I. “Do they worship the orange tree in your country?” “No, no,” said I. “Orange trees are the commonest of our possessions. We have them by thousands. Their leaves are of no account.” “So?” said he, with a look which said that he did not believe it. “We have no tree in all this city, nor anywhere in all this land, but a single orange tree. No one knows how the seed came here. We worship that tree; nothing else.” “A very pretty sentiment,” said I. “Nothing could be prettier.” “Hideous!” said he. “The leaves that drop from that tree and die are the cause of all our evil. We fight over them, we steal them, we waste our lives in getting them, and we suffer the agony of the itching palm when they are ours. Will you help me destroy the panther that guards the tree?” “Certainly not,” said I with a shiver. “You have made your choice,” said the Fool. “Buffino, give me the mirror.” The monkey, who had now returned, handed to the dwarf a large mirror, and the Fool held it up before my sister. Instead of the beautiful person of my sister appeared in the glass the face and figure of an old woman, bent, ugly, and wrinkled. My sister started back in dismay, and the dwarf held up the mirror before myself. It showed me a gross, puffy face with three chins and pig’s eyes, horribly repulsive. I shuddered. “Just as I thought,” said the Fool. “Tell me now, have you seen the King’s brother?” “Yes,” said I. “Will you marry him?” said he to my sister. “Oh!” said she. “How could I? I can’t say. I’m--” “Just as I thought,” said the dwarf. “And you won’t help me cure my people. What is it you came here to seek?” “We are seeking the best thing in the world,” said I. “And what is that?” “I don’t know; but we’ll certainly recognize it when we find it.” “Not you,” said the dwarf; “not until my mirror shows you fair and comely; _then_ you’ll know it.” “How are we to get it to show us fair and comely?” said I. “One of you by saving a miserable outcast, and the other by saving a whole people; then you’ll be fair and comely, inside and out, but not until then.” “You talk in riddles, master Buffo,” said I. “Let us go to the King.” “Madman!” said the dwarf, and gave the mirror back to the monkey, who scampered off with it and disappeared. We followed the Fool up the great staircase and into a distant wing of the palace, and stopped at a door, on which the hunchback knocked. Receiving no answer, he opened the door and led us in. “Your majesty!” he cried. _They Find the King in a Terrible State_